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The Numbers Tell the Story

April 15, 2013 - Bill McKibben’s brilliant article in the Rolling Stone of April 11 was not just
thought provoking, it was right on target.Entitled “The Fossil Fuel Resistance,” McKibben details why the laughter
of oil industry barons rings a bit hollow these days.There’s so much good information to be found
in McKibben’s latest call-to-arms, I’m going to give it the fine-tooth comb
treatment it deserves.

“My philosophy is to make money.”Rex Tillerson’s obscenely redundant
declaration followed his announced intention, as CEO of ExxonMobil, to more
than double the acreage over which his company is exploring for fossil fuel. (Isn’t there something about that word
“fossil” that’s just so inadvertently accurate, that describes Tillerson and
his fellow old-white-guys-who-
honor-the-almighty-dollar-more-than-their-mothers with an achingly awful degree
of precision?)He elaborated
contemptuously that renewable energy would account for just one percent of
American energy by 2040.Plainly he has
not read a University of Delaware study, to which McKibben refers, which states
that Americans can affordably power themselves 99.9 percent of the time with
renewables by 2030.

Perhaps Tillerson is aware that renewable energy creates
three times as many jobs as coal and gas and oil.In order to be happy about that, however, he
would need to remember that human beings are happiest when they have a purpose
and are engaged in beneficial activity.That most basic premise has been long forgotten by Exxon’s CEO and his
ilk.It has been replaced by a new-old
paradigm: if human beings facilitate the continuous acquisition of money, they
have a place in the world.If they do
not …It is actually that paradigm that
lies at the root of fossil fuel’s decline.The candle is burning brightest just before it goes out.

What of those who know better than the old white guys?Ah, their numbers are growing.The Climate Rally of two months ago in
Washington drew 40,000 participants to deliver the message that they oppose the
Keystone XL pipeline.Forty-eight of the
rally’s leaders were arrested: Nebraskans, Texans, First Americans, scientists
and black activists.Representatives of
the 323 campuses where leadership is being asked to give up fossil fuel
investment were there, as were opponents of mountaintop removal.Be mindful – these folks are fighting the
richest and most powerful industry the world has ever known.Gopal Dayaneni of the Movement Generation
Justice and Ecology project says it best.“Up to this point, grassroots organizing has kept more industrial carbon
out of the atmosphere than state or federal policy.”It is the oil industry’s ruthlessness that
makes that statement so remarkable.

Then there are the 60,000 people who have signed a pledge
promising to resist the pipeline if it is approved.They are members or affiliates of Credo,
which is described by McKibben as “the remarkable
cellphone-company-cum-activist-group.”Thomas Friedman was so impressed by the numbers that he expressed the
wish in his column that activists would “go crazy” with civil
disobedience.Friedman needs to be moved
enough by the numbers to go crazy himself.So do we all.

My one argument with McKibben centers on his apparent
misunderstanding of the term “peak oil.”He innocuously asserts that peak oil theorists have been proven wrong,
since more hard-to-get oil has been discovered.This, of course, merely serves to underscore peak oil “theorists”
contention that the easy-to-get stuff is all gone.M. King Hubbert wasn’t wrong: the good stuff, the stuff
without a lot of dirt in it, the stuff that can be found less than two miles
beneath the surface, IS all gone.From
now on, it will cost lots and lots of money to bring to the surface what remains.Yes, there’soil underneath the Arctic Ocean, but getting at it will be unmitigated hell.It’s time to seek alternatives.

Thanks, Bill McKibben, for reminding us that resistance is the only
course of action worth taking.

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